Jay didn't yell.
That scared Barry more than yelling would've.
"Door," Jay said.
Barry nudged it shut with his boot. The workshop swallowed the corridor noise; it was all fans, tools, and the low hum of battered machines.
He set the pack on the bench like it might explode.
"Parkade crate," Barry said. "Split with Lena and Kade. This is what's left."
Jay opened it.
Clean white and sterile silver gleamed back at them:
Sealed lung-support kits.
Antibiotic injectors.
Pain control.
Medbands actually designed this century.
For a heartbeat, Jay just stared.
"Shit," he said, almost softly. "You idiots actually pulled it."
"Overlapping selfish interests," Barry said. "And we shot down a flamethrower."
Jay's head snapped up. "You what."
"Later," Barry said. "Count first."
Jay moved fast:
One pile: Lissa.One pile: sale.Tiny pile: Barry's kit (two injectors, one premium band, one small lung-strip).
The repeater slate chimed as Jay pushed a portion through a friendly backdoor clinic and a gray-market buyer.
MED LOT (PARTIAL) SOLD: +55.0 NCEXISTING BUFFER: 25.0 NCTOTAL AVAILABLE: 80.0 NC
Barry blinked. "We had twenty-five?"
"Herb run, last payouts, minus your toys," Jay said. "I know my numbers. Don't argue."
He tapped the slate, jaw tight.
"Alright. We don't get stupid," Jay said. "We put real weight into the tower, keep some to keep you breathing."
On-screen:
APPLY 60.0 NC TO ACCOUNT: RANER, LISSA?
Barry's throat went dry. "Sixty?"
"Four days," Jay said. "Clean. Official. No tricks. Leaves twenty for gear and emergencies."
Barry swallowed. "Do it."
Jay hit confirm.
They both watched the MedTower feed.
LISSA RANER — 9 DAYStickLISSA RANER — 13 DAYS
Not a glitch. Not a mercy. Just numbers accepting the bribe.
"Four days," Barry said quietly.
"On top of what our own brew stretches," Jay said. "Call it more, if they don't pull a stunt."
Barry let the breath out slow. His legs went a little loose; he leaned on the bench.
"I thought you'd be more excited," Jay said.
"I am," Barry said. "It's just… the first time it doesn't feel like we're sprinting with a knife in our back."
"You are," Jay said. "You're just four steps further from the tip."
Barry huffed. "You're allergic to nice moments."
"Prevents infection," Jay said.
He swiped to another panel. "Now, the part that tastes like rust."
New log entries scrolled: Field 3 event summary, unit losses, auto-reviews.
Jay slowed one down.
UNIT: AF-PYR/LOG-774STATUS: DESTROYEDFLAG: CORRUPT RISKACTION: PURGE / REVIEW
"Flamer drone you idiots downed," Jay said. "System didn't like how that went."
"Good," Barry said. "Neither did my eyebrows."
"Scroll," Jay muttered.
Beneath the unit log sat another block. Not big. Definitely not nothing.
FIELD ANOMALY: ID // B-RANER-3STATUS: OBSERVEPRIORITY: NON-TERMINALACCESS: LIMITED
Barry stared at it.
"…The hell," he said.
"Welcome to being interesting," Jay said.
"In human," Barry said.
"In goblin," Jay said, "somewhere in NEXUS' gray soup, your collar ID has its own sticky note now."
"Non-terminal," Barry tried. "That's… good?"
"For now," Jay said. "Means: don't kill. Observe. Limited access means not every subroutine gets to see you normal."
"Explain the scan," Barry said, pulse climbing. "And the red-eye. And the ball."
"Exactly," Jay said. "That Blue-Eye in Five that looked at you and moved on? That was this. The red spider that twitched off you at the crate? This. The suicide ball that tried to pop you before we knew? That's why I don't celebrate yet."
Barry dragged a hand over his face. "I didn't do anything."
"Yeah," Jay said. "Which is the fun part. Could be bad code. Could be some leftover alien tag. Could be NEXUS picking test rats. Doesn't matter why yet. Matters that it's there."
"So what do we do?" Barry asked.
"Same thing we were doing before you became a line item," Jay said. "Run smart. Don't talk about this outside this room. Don't assume you're safe because one line says 'non-terminal'—they can flip that flag faster than you can miss a shot."
"You sure it's not helping?" Barry asked. "If they're mislabeling me—"
"Treat it like a misfiring safety," Jay cut in. "Nice when it clicks the right way. Never trust it over your own trigger."
He unplugged the slate, then shoved a small crate-stamped pack across the bench.
"Go see her," Jay said. "Show her we're not just screaming at walls anymore."
The MedTower felt less like a gallows with 13 next to Lissa's name instead of a single digit, but Barry still hated the place.
He paused under the big wall once:
LISSA RANER — 13 DAYS
We did that, he thought.
Ward 17. Same bed. Same mask. Different weight.
Lissa clocked him the second he came in.
"You've got that face," she rasped. "What did you break?"
"Just probability," Barry said. "Check your scoreboard."
She twisted enough to see the wall repeater.
Her eyes widened. "Thirteen?"
"Crate run," he said. Set the little medpack on the table. "Plus leaf crimes. Plus Jay being clever."
Tears hit her eyes too fast; she blinked them away, annoyed.
"Idiot," she said.
"Accurate," he said.
"I thought you said it was all one day at a time," she said.
"Still is," he said. "We just bought four of them in one punch. The rest's gravy."
She watched him a moment.
"Nurse was complaining," she said. "Something about 'field anomalies' clogging her console."
His gut tightened. "You hear details?"
"She said, 'If NEXUS wants to babysit some Runner ID, they shouldn't push the alerts to life-support monitors,'" Lissa said. "I assumed that was you."
Barry tried on a shrug. It didn't quite fit. "System hiccup. They get those."
"You're a terrible liar," she said.
"I get it from our father," he said.
She coughed a laugh, then winced.
"Listen," she said. "If this glitch thing means they notice you more, don't chase it. Take the days and stop when it's enough."
"It's never enough," Barry said quietly. "That's the problem."
"Then pick a line anyway," she whispered. "I don't want to be the reason you get taken apart by a blue-eyed blender."
He swallowed.
"You're not," he said. "You're just the reason I got fast enough it hasn't happened yet."
"That's worse," she muttered.
"Runs in the family," he said.
She gave him a narrow look. "Promise me you're not going in tomorrow."
"Jay's sitting on me for three days," Barry said. "Apparently rest is meta."
"Good," she said. "Take one win without sprinting to the next cliff, yeah?"
"Trying," he said.
He stayed until her breathing evened, the new meds easing the edges.
Thirteen days looked a lot like hope if he squinted.
Back in the workshop, Jay had the slate up again, showing a simplified map of NEXUS' local mesh: nodes and lines webbed over their district.
"You said rest," Barry said.
"This is me resting," Jay said. "Look."
He highlighted a knot of signals.
"Normal chatter," he said. "Bots, cams, Fields. All boring."
He tapped a smaller branch, blinking slower.
"This popped up after the med event," Jay said. "Low-level watcher. Tracks AF-PYR loss, red-eye purges, a couple of Locals… and this."
He zoomed. The tag blinked.
ANOMALY: B-RANER-3
Barry grimaced. "Stalker."
"More like a log file that might someday vote," Jay said. "But yeah. Point is: parts of NEXUS now agree you're weird. That's power or doom, depending on who gets there first."
"Comforting," Barry said.
"Upside," Jay said. "For the first time, we're not forced into every Round blind. We've got a buffer. We can choose big runs instead of clawing pennies."
"Until they flip 'non-terminal' to 'oops'," Barry said.
"Which is why we stay small on the outside and nasty on the inside," Jay said. "You, Lena, rifle-ghost— you never call it a team. You never brag. You keep walking out."
Barry sat on a crate, shoulders easing.
"So… tomorrow," he said. "I actually don't go?"
"You don't touch a gate," Jay said. "You eat. You sleep. You check who lived. That's your mission."
"No heroics," Barry said.
"Not until the math demands it," Jay said. "You're still a goblin first. Anomaly second."
Barry snorted.
After they lost, a four-day buffer and a creepy "observe" tag in a machine's brain counted as both blessing and threat.
For the first time, Barry wasn't just running to stop the bleeding.
Now he had time to think about why the system had circled his name—and what he might do with that before it changed its mind.